Keystone-classic: Redirects

[jamlen]

Since the site I am working on is an existing one and I'm transferring stuff from a PHP site to Keystone… how do I redirect pages that are now dead?

For example:

• index.php => /
• sermons.php => /
• sermon.php (with query string) => /sermon/{id}

[JedWatson]

Hey @jamlen,

This is pretty easy to solve, we've done it with a few sites ourselves.

For simplicity, I've just added a feature to allow you to set up redirects within Keystone itself, although this will only work for static URLs, e.g. index.php => /

Use it by adding the following to your route configuration (usually /routes/index.js), or your main keystone init file (usually /keystone.js) - anywhere _before_ keystone.start().

keystone.redirect('/index.php', '/');
keystone.redirect('sermons.php', '/');

You can also provide an object of redirect path: destination pairs:

keystone.redirect({
    '/index.php': '/',
    'sermons.php', '/'
});

Keystone processes redirects just before serving a 404 so they won't impact the performance of your other route handlers.

_note: the redirect functionality is in master but hasn't been released to npm yet, I'll update this issue when it is_

For dynamic routing, set up a route handler as you would for a view. We usually put these in a /routes/redirects/ folder and import it as you would /routes/views/:

// in routes/index.js
app.get('/', routes.views.index);
// etc.
app.all('/sermon.php', routes.redirects.sermon);

And here's an example of the redirect route controller, assuming you look up an old sermon ID in the database and map it to a new id (your solution may be simpler, but I'm providing a more complex example in case you need it)

// in routes/redirects/sermon.js
var keystone = require('keystone'),
    Sermon = keystone.list('Sermon');

module.exports = function(req, res) {
    Sermon.model.findOne().where('oldId', req.query.id).exec(function(err, sermon) {
        if (err) return res.status(500).render('errors/500'); // or however you handle errors
        if (!sermon) return res.status(404).render('errors/404'); // or your 404 template path
        res.status(301).redirect('/sermon/' +sermon.id);
    });
}

[jamlen]

Thanks @JedWatson that's great and I'll look at that, I also looked around and found express-redirect which looks nice and might have a go at plumbing it in if you like the look of it for more non-static redirection?

[JedWatson]

@jamlen good find - I really should have checked for an existing implementation first :)

We could definitely add similar support for parameters, and could build on it to support query arguments on both sides (express-redirect only implements them in the redirection url, so it wouldn't work for your sermon.php?id={sermonId} requirement).

The following would be fairly easy to support:

keystone.redirect({
    '/index.php': '/',
    '/sermons.php': '/'
    '/sermon.php': function(req) { return '/sermon/' + req.query.id }
});

Using the new async dependency injection library I made (/lib/asyncdi.js), we could even add support for callbacks, so the API would also work like this:

keystone.redirect('/sermon.php', function(req, redirect, next) {
    // do something async to validate req.query.id and find a valid sermonKey
    if (sermonKey) redirect('/sermon/' + sermonKey);
    else next(); // continues to standard 404 handler
});

Let me know what you think.

[kraigh]

FWIW, I was able to implement the express-redirect plugin with my keystone app by requiring it and just doing

keystone.redirect("/foo", "/bar");
redirect(keystone);
keystone.start();

I definitely like the idea of being able to support query arguments on both sides though, as @JedWatson mentioned above. Would definitely help preserve SEO juice when redeveloping an existing site.

[cantuket]

It would be extremely helpful to be able to specify 301 vs 302 redirects with this feature.

[ericelliott]

If you're already using a reverse proxy from nginx (which I do for all my Node powered sites), I recommend implementing your redirects at that level for better performance, and to keep the details of your old site's configuration out of your new site/application code.

[cantuket]

Awesome, thanks @ericelliott

I like this solution better. Worked great!

[ericelliott]

\( ﾟヮﾟ)/

[ericelliott]

@jamlen @JedWatson Do we need to keep this open tracking some planned work, or should we close this ticket?

[andrewlinfoot]

We're closing all feature requests to keep the issue tracker unpolluted. From now on submit feature requests on productpains.com!

https://productpains.com/post/keystonejs/redirects

[yao23]

@JedWatson @andrewlinfoot is there any way to redirect naked subdomain to www subdomain, for example, from https://example.com to https://www.example.com?

[mxstbr]

@yao23 that's a DNS thing, it has nothing to do with Keystone. Here's a guide for nginx for example.

[yao23]

@mxstbr I have no permission to change the server setting, so achieve it in code:

/* Keystone/routes/middleware.js */
/**
 Redirect naked domain (example.com) to full domain (www.example.com)
 */

exports.redirectToFullDomainName = function(req, res, next) {
    if(req.headers.host === 'example.com') {
        return res.redirect('http://www.example.com'+req.url);
    }
    next();
};

/* Keystone/routes/index.js */
// Common Middleware
keystone.pre('routes', middleware.redirectToFullDomainName);
keystone.pre('routes', middleware.initLocals);
keystone.pre('render', middleware.flashMessages);

[alexgrant999]

@JedWatson Hi Jed,
I am trying to get all pages on my site: www.findyoga.com.au to redirect to the https instead of http as google is indexing both the secure and non-secure sessions. Is there an easy way to get a redirect happening?
Thanks:)

[cbstodd]

Hey guys, a bit of a noob question (I can't find anything anywhere). I'm hosting on Heroku, and I'm noticing that my Google search results are showing my https://colinstodd-v2.herokuapp.com in the results. I'm looking to create a 301 redirect to redirect the app to its home page/custom domain http://www.colinstodd.com (or home). Everything is set up correctly, I just want to get rid of the https://colinstodd-v2.herokuapp.com/ from being indexed by Google, and Heroku suggests setting up a 301 redirect. I thought to do keystone.redirect('colinstodd-v2.herokuapp.com', '/'); but that's not working.

Im a bit lost. Sorry to be the noob. FWIW, I'm loving Keystone :)

[danurbanowicz]

@cbstodd If the Google results are your only issue, you could do this by placing a canonical tag in the <head> for each of your pages e.g.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.colinstodd.com">

This would eventually prevent Google from displaying the Heroku Domain in search results and is better than setting up a redirect as it is often useful to be able to access your site via the Heroku Domain, independently of your own custom domain(s).